I (a poe noob) think there are 2 paths - you follow a guide that tells you what gear and skills to use, and assuming you follow a low budget beginner starter build, you walk through all content quickly until lategame farming and trade for endgame gear. Or you go without a build guide, play the campaign at your pace with gear you find while you watch and read info on whatever you want to learn about. One way is fast and smooth, the other can take literally 10x more time and deaths and very possibly leave you with 1 or more characters that can't finish all content.
There's a huge amount of content and overwhelming number of side mechanics from past leagues that you can interact with or skip during your first play.
Personally I've played 3 characters through 10 act campaign, taking like 40-100 hours each the first 2 and much faster the third, solo self found with no guides, learning as I go. There's still a ton i haven't interacted with, especially late game content. But haven't been bored or super frustrated yet. Expecting to play for hundreds more hours. Depends on how you like to approach things, and what experience and expectations you have. Poe1 currency vs FG is pretty weak, so farming doesn't have much appeal to me, mostly exploring the lore, learning how to build characters, and eventually speed running.
Edit: there is a very active official poe 1+2 discord server, highly recommend to join for answers to advice you'll need either way. And stash tabs are on sale regularly; if you find you need them, which most players do, waiting for sale saves about 25%
This post was edited by VexTheBrave on Mar 27 2026 08:25am